


Setting A Good Example

by Trojie



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alcohol, Crack, Fluff, Gen, Kid Fic, Parenthood, Role Models, Stiletto Heels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-13
Updated: 2011-12-13
Packaged: 2017-10-27 07:11:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/293073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trojie/pseuds/Trojie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cobb needs a sitter, Eames needs lessons in childcare, Philippa needs a stern talking-to, James needs a stomach-pump and Arthur probably needs a stiff drink to deal with all of the above.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Setting A Good Example

**Author's Note:**

> The idea was born in emails, and fermented in the back of my mind for some time. The correct timing of the ending and a good portion of helpful beta-reading is courtesy of Ineptshieldmaid.

  
_Cobb_   


‘I can’t believe you think we need a sitter!’ Philippa is seventeen, and therefore her natural state of being is indignant and/or sulky. Dom has to remind himself of this daily when he finds himself reminiscing about the adorable six-year-old she used to be. _It’s a phase,_ he tells himself slightly desperately. _This is completely normal_. ‘I’ll be eighteen in two weeks, and you still won’t let me watch my brother for a couple of hours? God, it’s like you think we’re going to burn the house down or something.’

Dom refrains from pointing out that there was that one time ...

‘Perhaps I can be of assistance?’ drawls Eames from the doorway. He’s been in the house for a day, mostly sitting in one of the guest bedrooms with a notebook and a sheaf of printed-out emails, going over the details of the mark’s husband for the job Dom brought him here for. Their window of opportunity is tomorrow night, and Arthur was uncharacteristically unable to get a flight out until today. Now Dom has to go and get him, and while they’re very fond of their Uncle Arthur neither of the kids wants to endure a three-hour round-trip car ride to the airport to collect him when he’s going to be staying here anyway. This means that Dom has to hire a sitter at extremely short notice.

The argument with Philippa is something he really should have anticipated. The fact that none of their regular sitters are available is, too. Dom pictures three hours squeezed into a tin can with two teenagers who don’t want to be there and a man capable of being so annoying that Arthur has repeatedly threatened to shoot him in the face, and mentally smacks his head into the wall.

‘Cobb? Cobb. I’ll watch them,’ Eames says, slowly and pointedly, and Dom realises his mind may have been wandering a bit.

Eames watching the kids. This would be the perfect solution, except for the fact that this is Eames.

‘I thought you’d want to come to the airport to pick up Arthur,’ Dom points out. As far as he’s aware, Eames hasn’t seen Arthur in about five years. He’s probably got so many smartass things to say his brain will back up and explode.

‘I’ve still got reams of notes to go over,’ Eames points out. ‘And I’d hate for Arthur to think I hadn’t been doing my homework,’ he adds, rolling his eyes. ‘You go. I can look after the youth of today quite happily.’

In hindsight, it’s sentences like that that Dom really needs to learn to pay attention to. As it is, he shrugs, grabs his car keys, instructs James and Philippa that they have to _behave_ , and thinks absolutely nothing of the broad wink Eames favours him with as he heads out the door.

  
_Arthur_   


'Please tell me this is not what it looks like,' says Cobb, a little faintly, as they walk up the driveway to the house. There’s quite a scene visible through the front windows.

'Looks a lot like Eames teaching Philippa to walk in five-inch stiletto heels, but I can tell you it isn't if you like,' Arthur says evenly. He adds, 'You said you got a sitter.'

'I said I got someone to watch them,' Cobb corrects. 'Where the hell is James?'

'Under the coffee table. The one with the empty bottle of bourbon on it.'

'Shit.'

'So by 'someone' you meant 'Eames'?'

'I was desperate.'

'You'd have to have been,' Arthur agrees. 'And it didn't occur to you that what you just did there was give a monkey the keys to the banana plantation?'

'He's forty-five, I didn't think-'

'You didn't think he'd be Eames?'

'Fine, I'm an idiot,' Cobb concedes as he pulls his keys out to open the door. 'Now can we please concentrate on saving my daughter's morals and not having to have my son's stomach pumped?'

  
_Eames_   


'I think, for the record, that this is very unfair,' says Eames through the kitchen door. 'It's not as if I produced stripperrific heels and a bottle of the demon drink the second Cobb left and said 'hey kids, let's have an inappropriate party'.'

'Oh, I'm sure you're completely innocent,' says Arthur levelly from about Eames's waist-height, which suggests he's sitting on a chair out in the hallway. Guarding. As if Eames is about to attempt an escape from Colditz or something.

'Philippa was proposing to leave the house in that get-up,' Eames points out. 'I thought giving her a few eyeshadow tips and some lessons in not twisting her ankle would stall her long enough for you two to get back.'

'And James?'

'He was going to drink the bourbon anyway, holed up in his room - I thought doing it supervised would be a better idea. Cobb really needs to snoop through their bedrooms more often, anyway. James's collection of fake IDs is starting to rival his own.'

Arthur sighs gustily on the other side of the door. 'Eames, you're not a father.'

Eames can't help but bristle a little. 'I've been a father more times than you've had hot dinners,' he retorts.

'You've _forged_ fathers,' Arthur corrects. 'What I mean is, you are not actually responsible for a child on a day-to-day basis, are you?'

'No,' Eames admits. 'I am not a father. However, that doesn't mean that my logic doesn't hold. Or that I should be locked up in the kitchen while Cobb interrogates his delinquent offspring.'

'You're in the kitchen because for the shouting they're about to get to take hold, they really don't need someone challenging their father's authority,' says Arthur. 'And don't try and deny that you'd argue their point, Eames, I know you better than that.'

'I kept Philippa off the streets and tanked James up on chips to soak up the booze so that he won't need his stomach pumped. I fail to see why I'm in the metaphorical doghouse. Or the literal kitchen.'

'Because Cobb wants to think his children are still six and four.'

'Ah.'

'Yeah.'

'So I should have burnt the heels, dumped the bourbon down the drain, nailed them to their seats and forced them to play Monopoly whilst eating broccoli, then?'

'Pretty much.'

Eames can hear Arthur moving around out there. 'Can I come out now?' he ventures.

'I suppose,' says Arthur. 'I think they're mostly finished the shouting now.' There's the scrabbling sound of Arthur moving his chair out of the way - he was _leaning against the door_? Isn't that a bit overkill? - and then the door opens. Eames looks down - Arthur looks up.

'Are you still wearing those?' Arthur asks, quirking an eyebrow.

'Well, _my_ shoes are in the living room. Where the shouting is.'

'If I ask why you're wearing them at all, I'm going to get a lecture on how you can't teach a runway-model style walk without demonstrating, aren't I,' says Arthur flatly, but he looks like he's about to start laughing, so Eames decides he's clearly won this round.

'Pretty much,' Eames says, shrugging. 'Can we go through so I can actually retrieve my own footwear?'

'Not until you tell me how you even fit into Philippa's heels,' Arthur folds his arms over his chest, looking implacable and yet still on the verge of the giggles.

'With style and panache,' says Eames, unwilling to be drawn on just how much it hurts to mash your toes together this hard. 'The same way I do everything.'

Further up the hallway, the living room door opens, flooding them with warm, yellow light. Cobb appears in silhouette in the doorway. Even like that he looks knackered. 'They've gone to bed, finally,' he says. 'Eames, get out of my daughter's shoes and get in here.'

Eames refrains from asking what fripperies of his daughter's Cobb would _rather_ he was in, because that's somewhat disturbing and also liable to get him kicked in the delicate bits, and kicks the heels off with some relief. He does pick them up, though. No sense leaving them around to trip over. Also Cobb might want to burn them.

***

At breakfast the next morning, Cobb and Arthur appear to have formed an experimental hardcore percussion duo. Eames is sure that their Etude in Crash-bang Minor for Frying-pan and Skillet will be highly acclaimed, but James has a very obvious hangover, the enormous plate of chips he ate last night notwithstanding, and from the looks of it the noise is not helping.

' _Dad_ ,' says Philippa pointedly, gesturing at her brother, who is roughly the colour of a fine Wensleydale cheese. 'God, it's like he's five or something,' she says to Eames. 'He's sulking.'

Eames doesn't think Cobb is sulking so much as exercising his parental rights to creative punishments, but he does feel intensely sorry for James. He opens his mouth to say something, only to have a plate of breakfast plopped down in front of him by Arthur, who shakes his head once with a warning look on his face. The Cobbs have to work this out on their own, is his clear message.

Eventually James stirs, and glares through red eyes at his father. 'Jeez, Dad,' he says. 'I get it.'

'I hope you do,' says Cobb in what he probably means to be a severe 'Dad Voice'. But he does put down the frying pan, at least. Leaning over the bench-top, he assumes a Serious Dad Face. 'I know it seems like fun, and all the other kids are probably doing it too, but alcohol can have very serious effects on your system, James -'

James rolls his eyes, and Eames is just wondering what that might be about when Arthur taps him on the shoulder and indicates that maybe they should start making towards the exits. Eames does as he's told, because when Arthur tells you to bail, you bail, but he's still wondering why when James says pointedly 'Like Somnacin can?'

Two corners away in the living room, practicing their duck-and-cover maneouvre, Eames turns to Arthur and says, 'The apple never falls far from the tree, does it?'

Arthur just grins.


End file.
